etheriafandomcom-20200214-history
High Elf
Back to Races ---- Buildings Units ''Wisp'' Wisps are very weak builders that are used for the Elven races. They can morph into the Ancient Wisp at cost. This requires 4 Wisps. Unlike other builder units, Wisps cannot be put into mines. ''Ancient Wisp - Advanced Elven Builder/Missile Unit'' Made by combining 4 wisps (takes a total of 300 crystals). It generates crystal as a level 2 mine and can be a lifesaver for crystal hungry elves. Make as much of them as possible and coupled with trade in merchant building by mid game you won't have scarcity of resources. They can construct buildings and act as a decent missile unit when they must be used. They have average toughness and are a bit of a jack of all trades. Their weakness to physical attacks means they should not be regularly used or depended upon in battles. ''Iceguard'' Fast but low hit points and combat. Updgrade availabe after level 3. However essentail against dwarves. ''Longbowman'' ''Dragon Knight'' Comparable to knights of the knghts race (though there are no armor and attack upgrades) and the only cavalry in the game able to attack fliers. Excellent to hunt and kill dragons. ''Mystic'' ''Ice Maiden'' ''Manticore'' ''Unicorn'' ''Moonguard'' One of the most powerful ranged units in the game. Strategy Overall The High Elves are powerful, but like all Elven races in WBC3, are handicapped by the inability to add workers to mines. Of the three Elven races, the High Elves have the best remedies for this weakness. Careful planning of your build sequence is essential, but if done properly, the High Elves can be a contender in any battle. Also, High Elven units have very few hit points. This should be accounted for when planning your build strategy. For all the focus on healing in the Elven buildings and heroes, one will often find they do not have a chance to use any of it - by the time Elven units need healing, they're already dead. ''The Race'' Units Build your keep and unit producing buildings (1 or 2) as soon as possible and begin turning out Iceguards and later, Longbows. These require gold and metal, so they won't interrupt your keep development (stone and crystal). If you don't have any Ancient Wisps in your retinue, try to build 2 or 3 for their crystal generating ability, and get 10 XP for each so you can keep them. Dragon Knights arrive once you build the appropriate rune in your keep, and they should form the backbone of your forces. They're fast, powerful, cheap, and best of all - can attack both air and ground enemies. Later buildings will also allow you to improve their combat scores, making them even more effective. The High Elven siege unit (the Manticore) is ineffective against buildings, though a few of them can decimate an enemy horde quickly. A line of Longbows does this just as effectively however. The two High Elven mages, Mystics and Ice Maidens are best mixed in to a line of Longbows and set to the Magic Defender attribute. Their Ring of Ice, Hand of Ice, and Freeze spells can save your ranged units from melee attackers that closed the gap. They can heal the troops in battle. Have a few unicorns set to magic defender with you. The High Elven general (Moonguard) is not very useful in my opinion, as ranged units require strength in numbers to be effective and are vulnerable to melee attack. The Moonguard then is best used like the mages - mixed in with a company of Longbows, and set to Magic Defender. Finally - the High Elves benefit from the best mix of fliers and dragons of any race - Pegasi are fast and powerful, Frost Dragons can slow their opponents, and Celestial Dragons boost your crystal with every kill (although this is likely unimportant by the time you have a Celestial Dragon). In another opinion moonguards are the most powerful ranged units in the game. They are fast, have good combat, good hit points and with fire arrows can destroy buildings with ease. A handful of them are good enough to stop any kind of attack (except skeletons or missile resistant orcs). I have used 4-5 moonguards (fully upgraded) to kill titans. Buildings Your primary focus in building should be to obtain your income skills, and purchase them as soon as possible. Although there are some other methods of gaining resources (e.g. keeping Ancient Wisps in your retinue for their crystal income) nothing is as effective as the three income boosts and trade skill. After that, building your Dragon Knights and Pegasi take precedence - so pursue the rune and flier unit building required to generate those. Ensure that your pegasi production doesn't overly slow the growth of your primary keep, as both require stone and crystal. ''Heroes'' The High Elven hero skills of Life Rune and Arcane Rune (replaces Energy in unofficial patch 1.03.24) are invaluable to this race. Nothing helps offset the low hit points problem better than an XP bonus. As these skills are inherent to the High Elven race, the player has a variety of good class options to choose from. A favorite is the Priest, which allows Healing and Lore synergies, plus adds the extremely valuable Divination sphere of magic (Mind Leech and Telepathy are tailor-made for the High Elves) Other good choices are the Healer which offers more powerful synergised healing spells and the Paladin (Although the Knight Protector skill doesn't work on High Elven Dragon Knights) if you're looking for a tougher hero. The Archmage can provide a lot of valuable tools to the High Elves. They can help the economy by summoning mine fillers in the form of Quasits with Summoning Magic (even though income in this way has been halved for the elves, it is still quite useful). Archmages which use Alchemy can instantly capture mines with Acquire (in a large command radius thanks to the naturally good High Elven Charisma) and exchange one resource for another with the Transmute spell. The Divination spell sphere grants the ability to increase the XP of the High Elven forces in much the same way as the Priest would. If a non-spellcasting class is wanted, a simple Merchant can help to bring down the prices of multiple units, researches and buildings whilst simultaneously providing plenty of resource production in terms of the highly useful Gold and Crystal resources. Counters *High Elven units have few hits. Take advantage of this by removing any melee elves with ranged attacks as they do not factor in the elves' high melee combat. *Piercing resistant cavalry or cavalry with Piercing attacks can be used effectively against the High Elven Longbowmen. *Stop the High Elves before they get access to the Flaming Arrows research. Letting them complete that research could mean the game. *High Elves need to research in order to gain access to increased resource production. Whenever possible, destroy High Elven Merchant buildings in the early game to prevent them from getting the resources which would greatly help them to produce their skillful yet expensive units. Lore